Preparing the Next Generation of Racists

Last updated: October 12
 
Betsy Devos can usually be counted on the embrace school vouchers over charter schools as the preferred method of privatizing public education, but there is one notable exception.  DeVos and her alt-right handlers from the White House have a special place their "hearts" for online charter schools, which provide parents free rein to educate or miseducate their children in a home school environment.  

In order to build a future majority of white U. S. nationalists, Trumpists need an education model like online charters in rural areas that allows white supremacist moms and dad the opportunity to indoctrinate their children in the requisite levels of hate that may sustain and grow the white supremacist movement.

The fact that online charter schools have long-established records of being utterly ineffective in providing academic and social skills to children appears entirely irrelevant to the renewed federal enthusiasm among Trumpists for these intellectual black holes:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has touted online learning as a school-choice solution for rural America, saying that virtual charter schools provide educational options that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

But in Pennsylvania, an early adopter where more than 30,000 kids log into virtual charter schools from home most days, the graduation rate is a dismal 48 percent. Not one virtual charter school meets the state’s “passing” benchmark. And the founder of one of the state’s largest virtual schools pleaded guilty to a tax crime last year.

A recent issue of Harper's has a story on women of the alt-right, which includes this clip that helps us understand the Trumpist enthusiasms for choosing cyber charters as an enabler for the most damaging forms of home schooling:

In January, Mary Grey self-published an illustrated children’s book called Walls and Fences. “Why do we build walls? We have walls for protection,” the text begins, set against a colorful image of the biblical city of Jericho as its walls tumble down at God’s behest. Grey said she wrote the book “to help explain to my children why having a wall around our country” — like the one Trump has pledged to build along the U.S.?Mexico border — “is justified and a good and normal thing.”

There is a long legacy of pro-white extremists trying to create illusions of normalcy. Kathleen Blee, a sociology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in her book Inside Organized Racism that “much about racist groups appears disturbingly ordinary, especially their evocation of community, family, and social ties.” In a two-year study of thirty-four women across the United States, Blee found that her subjects, many of whom were educated and held good jobs, were “responsible for socializing their children into racial and religious bigotry.”

Stewart told me she has read Walls and Fences to her children. Her younger ones — she has six in all — regularly crawl into view in her videos. She homeschools them to ensure that their education is Christian and pro-white; she discourages interracial relationships and no longer supports gay rights. In one YouTube post, she included an image of her smiling, toddler-age daughter wearing a frog outfit. This was a homage to Pepe the Frog, one of the alt-right’s signature memes, with bulging eyes, red lips, and an oversize green head. . . .

Note for homeschoolers:  One home school parent posted an anonymous comment (I don't publish anonymous comments) that indicated she believes that I was calling all home schoolers racists and white supremacists.  Her reasoning followed something like this:

Schools Matter says white supremacists are using homeschooling to indoctrinate their children.

I home school.

Therefore, Schools Matter is calling me a racist.

Not it.  Read the article. Damn.